Ralph Waldo Emerson

As soon as there is life there is danger.

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

In the end, people will judge you anyway, so don’t live our life impressing other – live your life impressing yourself.

Some people are stuck on who I was that who I am never even had a chance.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

They that deny a God destroy man’s nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and, if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature.

Train hard, turn up, run your best and the rest will take care of itself.

I think we foreshorten our own viewpoint if we consider any state of mind, or society, or government as final. Growth and change! We can’t get away from them.

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one’s destruction or their use. A standard both to buy and sell, all things from heaven down to hell.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

Society is a hospital of incurables.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.